Old 97's [ tickets ] singer and rhythm guitarist Rhett Miller realizes how lucky he is to still be in a successful act.

"Fifteen years in, it's easy to be grateful suddenly," Miller said during a phone interview with LiveDaily from his home in New York's Hudson Valley. "It's easy--in a way that it wasn't when I was younger--to realize, 'Oh my God. How lucky are we?' While all of our peers have had to go out and get real jobs--knock wood--we are still able to go out and do it on as big as a level as we've ever done, if not bigger every time we go out. It's a great feeling. It makes you grateful for it."

Miller explained the keys to having a successful band are similar to those in a happy marriage. Plus, all four band members of Old 97's--including bassist Murry Hammond, lead guitarist Ken Bethea and drummer Phillip Peeples--are friends.

"When there are problems, [we] really try and talk them out instead of letting them fester," Miller said. "...You have to address the issues before they become big. You have to listen to each other. You have to be kind. It's real basic stuff you learn in school or from your parents when you're a kid, and trying to apply it. What's the old Pavement lyric about 'tension and fame and career, career'?"

These days, Old 97's are packing concert halls in support of "Blame It On Gravity," which hit stores May 13. Miller talked to LiveDaily about the album's title, capturing the energy of the group's lives shows and the status of his solo career.

LiveDaily: Why decide to name your album "Blame It On Gravity"?

Rhett Miller: Oh God, the title was tough on this one. I guess it's always been a little bit tough. We agonized. We had lists of hundreds of title ideas--some of them lyrics, some of them song titles, some of them out of nowhere. That was one I dismissed early on. Early on, I had it on the list. It was one of my very first ideas. It's my favorite song. It's a juicy lyric from that song. But then there's something about it that smacked me as being a negative-sounding thing. So I erased it from the list and I came back to it after we had been agonizing literally weeks about the title. I came back to it probably because the producer, Salim [Nourallah], who's a good friend of mine, we had pulled the trigger on calling the album "Dance With Me." I thought, "That's arguably the best song on the album. Let's make that the title track." I had all these examples of title tracks of records and how it works. Salim pointed out, "Maybe that just doesn't sound juicy enough to do justice to the lyrics on the record." The lyrics are pretty complicated, and interesting and weird. He suggested "Blame It On Gravity" again. If it's a little bit negative sounding, big deal. We have pictures of sunflowers on the album cover. It might be good to have a little contrast between the two.

The iTunes version of the album has two previously unreleased demos on it. A lot of bands aren't interested in releasing demos. Why the move?

These days, because there's so many weird sort of outlets--the Internet and Best Buy--and everybody wants different songs, outtakes or different versions or whatever. We love those demos. Those demos got us so excited about making the record. We didn't have a lot of extra songs on the record because we had really focused on the songs we decided [to use]. I thought we would pare down, but we really loved all the songs we had. So we kept them all on the actual album. It made sense to use these demos that we loved and use those as value-added pieces, or whatever.

How do you feel "Blame It On Gravity" fits in with your catalog?

To me, it's as good as anything we've ever done. I feel like it's got the high energy that's reflective of our live show in the way that "Too Far to Care" had. I think it's got the diversity and scope that "Fight Songs" had. I think it's got some of the poppiness that "Satellite [Rides]" had that I really loved. Everything is really catchy and pretty. It kind of had that power-pop sort of edge. There's some of that in there. I love it. I'm glad I love it, too, because I had to be on the road so much promoting it that if I didn't believe in it so wholeheartedly, it would make it very tough to leave my family. As it is, I feel it would be doing a disservice to our legacy if I didn't go out there and try to work it as hard as I could. I feel like this stands up with all of our best records.

You mentioned the album captures the high energy of the live shows. I think that's really true. That must be hard to do in the studio.

Thanks. ... You're right: it's hard to do in the studio, [especially] because you can't recreate that energy of 2,000 people screaming back in your face. That's kind of a magical thing. But our producer again, Salim Nourallah, has been a friend of ours for a long time, and really appreciates what this band is and how strongly people feel about us. I think he made it his mission to make the kind of record our fans would really love and would reflect the things about us that make us the kind of band that can last for 15 years and still have bigger and bigger audiences every time we go out.

Did you record "Blame It On Gravity" any differently than your previous albums?

Well, the last one, "Drag It Up," was recorded very, very quickly. And that was a little rough. It's not my favorite way to record. I know it's rough on Ken because Ken, our guitar player, likes to really experiment. You can tell on this record that he got to take his time making his guitar parts just the way he wants them. And he really did. The fact we recorded in Dallas, and he was able to come into work every day and sleep at home and see his kids and still be in the studio--it made a big difference. And we really took our time, which was three months or so making the record, as opposed to three weeks on "Drag It Up." It was a big difference. This was more like we used to record when we were on Elektra, in that we used to take a long time and really agonize over stuff. It was different in that we were in a studio that wasn't the big residential studio where you go and you're, like, in a resort. For "Satellite Rides," we were in Willie Nelson's palatial studio in Texas with two swimming pools. We were there for weeks and weeks. This was more about being in Dallas--right in the neighborhood where we grew up--and being able to go into work every day, and also feel like we were kind of separate from--for me, at least, I was away from my home in the Hudson Valley in New York and Murry was away from his home in L.A. At the same time, we weren't at some Disneyland-type studio. When we did "Fight Songs," we were in this beautiful old mansion in New Orleans. You can imagine what it was like spending a month there.

Tell me about the songwriting process for "Blame It On Gravity."

It was nice because we had a few years between records. I was able to pick what I thought were the best songs. It's tougher now that I'm a little older. When I didn't have kids, when I didn't have a wife, I could just stay up all night every night, the whole world revolved around me and whatever agony I was feeling over whatever romantic situation I might have been embroiled in. Now it's different. Now I have to steal away to find time. And I have to maximize the time that I do have because there's so little of it. But it's good because, being a little bit older, my radar is stronger. I know if something's going to be good or bad a lot more quickly. I don't have to go down a lot of dead ends to get a song to be good. It's different. I have to fictionalize a lot more.

We just had a big review on NPR where Robert Christgau was wondering about the state of my marriage. On NPR! You're killing me dude. I like him a lot. He's somebody I really respect. He wrote the liner notes for our best-of record ["Hit By a Train: The Best of Old 97's"]. I had to e-mail him and tell him, "Dude, Erica and I are fine." They're just songs. There's characters and there's people you see out in the world and you make up stories about them. Or you dip into this well of agony that got filled up years and years ago. I don't have to actually be going through all of that right now, thank God.

What can we expect from your solo career? Are you working on anything new?

I've got a pile of songs. I'm going to try and bust out a solo record. I think it'll be really acoustic and quiet and campfire-sounding. I think it'll be pretty easy to make. I'm talking to another label right now about who's going to put it out. I've also got a handful of songs for the next Old 97's record and I feel so good about where the Old 97's are that I want to strike while the iron is hot and make a record as quickly as we can. With Salim at the helm and the band playing the way we are right now, it would be stupid to drag our feet too much on the next Old 97's record. It's good. I foresee a couple of really busy years.